Over the years physical exercise has grown in popularity to improve the health and physical appearance of a person and also to reduce stress. There are a many forms of physical exercise that may be employed by a person such as: strength training, aerobics, calisthenics, and plyometrics to name a few. A common strength training exercise is the traditional push-up. In performing a push-up, a user assumes a prone position, and lifts the body using the arms. Through this exercise, the weight of the body serves as the main source of resistance to the muscles, particularly the pectoralis muscles, which are used in performing the push-up. However, greater muscle training efficiency may be obtained by activating additional muscle groups while performing the push-up. This is accomplished by modifying the standard up-down motion of the push-up to include various secondary movements such as: leg raises, one-armed push-ups, various hand positions, hip raises and the like. By using such modifications, the user activates various secondary muscle groups, which in turn significantly increase the effectiveness of the physical exercise. Additionally, alternating between push-up exercises and cardiovascular activity may provide additional benefits.
Additionally, exercise efficiency can be further enhanced by random activation of these secondary muscle groups, which induces muscle confusion. It is known that performing the same exercise over and over cause the human body to adapt to these exercise motions and thereby causing a diminishing return by performing the same exercise repeatedly. Consequently, by employing muscle confusion that randomly activates various secondary muscle groups during a particular exercise, the human body is less likely to adapt to the exercise motions and thus receives greater benefit from the exercise.
There are several known devices in the prior art that seek to enhance the overall effectiveness of performing various exercises and in particular the traditional push-up. These devices commonly seek to facilitate one or more secondary motions, which in turn activate additional muscle groups during the core exercise. While these devices have shown some benefits, the devices typically provide a limited specialized activity or require conversion of the device to switch between exercises. Additionally, such devices have typically changed the required positioning of the user's hands and/or wrists away from the natural push-up position.